Nice Guys

By J. S.

A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Directed by Sidney Poitier

Screenplay by Charles Blackwell

Creeping nice-guyism is the curse of the caper film, and there is a soggy half-hour toward the middle of this one when the viewer's tolerance has blotted up all of the loyalty and steadfastness it can ab sorb. Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier are supposed to be big-time thieves, and ri val thieves at that, and the moment comes when the canons of good, trashy cinema require that one of them sell the other's behind to the FBI and disappear with the loot to live crookedly ever after in Brazil, tt does not happen. They remain buddy-buddy to the end, which is happy. Sac charin causes something worse than can cer in rats; it causes bad movies.

This one isn't all that bad; it's merely a bit too cheerful. Cosby, a safecracker, and Poitier, a con man, pull off separate, spectacular stings at the film's outset, only :o find that a retired police lieutenant James Earl Jones) has their number. When the blackmail threat comes, it is a stunner: each of them must spend the next several years working full time with underprivileged kids in a black community center, or face exposure. Jones' late wife founded the center, you see, and . . . aw, she-it, as the street kids say. The kids are lovable monsters, Poitier is a smoothie but Cosby, who has one of the great faces of the Western world, is the best thing in this woofin', shuckin' film.

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